A home of their own
Our view: Md. must reduce the number of foster children living in group settings
Ask any parent who they would want to take care of their children if for somereason they couldn’t do it themselves, and the answer almost certainly would be a relative, a close friend or another family willing to give them a loving, supportive home. The last thing they would want is for their children to never experience the emotional warmth and sense of belonging that comes from growing up in a close-knit family setting.
Yet far too many children face just that prospect in Maryland and across the country. A recent study by the Annie E. Casey Foundation reported that nearly 57,000 children in the child welfare system nationwide live in group homes or institutions even though there’s no documented need for them to be in such facilities. They are there simply because child welfare officials have no other convenient place to put them, and despite the fact that such mis-matches cause them to miss out on opportunities to form strong, lasting attachments during their crucial formative years.
It may seem intuitive that kids do best when they grow up in stable family settings, but it’s a view that’s also backed up by solid research. Studies show that the secure attachments provided by loving caregivers not only are desirable in and of themselves but vital to a child’s healthy physical, social and emotional development. At the same time, kids who grow up without such experiences and attachments are at greater risk of school failure, running afoul of the law or becoming victims of abuse in the group settings they are placed in. The Casey researchers found that even youths who appear to be “successful” in such settings lose most of the gains they make during the first six months or so, after which the gains seem to level off or even regress.
That’s whyMaryland needs to do more to reduce the number of youngsters living in group and institutional settings and place them in family situations where they can achieve their full potential. In 2013, the last year for which statistics are available, the state had about 4,486 foster children under its supervision, of whom some 628, or about 14 percent, were living in group homes or institutional settings. That’s about the national average for the proportion of foster children in group homes, but it’s far higher than the states with the best records for placing foster kids with families, where only about 5 percent of foster children live in group settings.
There are steps the state can take to place more of its foster children in family settings. First, it could expand the pool of potential foster parents by making a greater effort to identify and locate relatives whocantake children in. Andit needs to makesure they have the support they need to help children thrive by offering them the same benefits and services other foster families enjoy.
The state should aggressively recruit and train new foster parents so that they are available when needed and willing to accept the types of children most likely to need homes at any given time. Lots of people only want infants or very young children, but those are few and far between compared to the number of early adolescents and teenagers without parents. Boys are harder to place than girls, and black youngsters are harder to place than whites. Moreover, before assigning children to any group setting, child welfare workers should be required to show why the youngsters can’t be placed with a family. The default option should always be a relative or foster parent rather than the quick fix of warehousing youngsters in institutions.
There may be some children whose physical or mental disabilities are so severe that they will always require institutional care. But for most children, group settings should be the remedy of last resort, and even then such placements should only be temporary. Maryland can reduce the number of foster children in group settings even further than it has already, and it should do so as quickly as possible for its young people who, through no fault of their own, find themselves separated from their parents and the security of home.